Right You Are (If You Think So) Literary Elements

Play/Dramatic parable

Originally published in Italian.

According to the stage directions: “In a provincial capital. Present day.” Individual scenes take place in various room of Councilman Agazzi’s home.

The play features no narrator and the whole point of the narrative of that realty is merely a construction of multiple of points of view. The perspective of characters toward the mysteries at the center of the story essentially qualifies as the main engine driving the plot. The audience is urged, however, to adopt the perspective of Laudisi.

The overall mood of the play is one of ironic absurdity. This mood is heightened by the sardonic tone taken toward the rest of the characters by the play’s personification of sensibility, the raisonneur (see below): Laudisi.

Protagonists: The Agazzis and Sirellis. Antagonists: Mrs. Frola and the Ponzas.

The conflict lying at the heart of the drama is the mystery of who is telling the truth about Mrs Ponza: Mrs. Frola or Mr. Ponza?

The story reaches its climax with confusing revelation that succeeds in clearing up nothing by Mrs. Ponza herself that both Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza have been telling the truth.

The ending of Act One foreshadows directly the parallel structures of repetition that also end Act Two and Act Three, but the addition of Laudisi’s ironic laughter can be read as foreshadowing the anti-climactic ending of the play.

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The mirror into which Laudisi addresses his reflection, asking of it “which of us two is crazy” and the “impenetrable black veil” which masks the face of Mrs. Ponza are the two central pieces of imagery in the play as they both act as commentary upon the themes of illusion, truth, and secrets which drive the plot.

The final revelation of the identity of Mrs. Ponza which is supposed to serve as the answer to the mystery of who is telling the truth is paradox which is manifested as a paradox by virtue of lack of a definitive answer while providing two direct answers. Mrs. Ponza makes it explicit that both Mrs. Frola and her husband have been truthful while concluding that “I am no one!”

Each of the play’s three acts end with an example of parallelism in which Laudisi repeats a similar ironic assertion about truth: “You’re all looking at one another? Well! The truth?” and “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the truth has been discovered” and “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the voice of truth!”

One can argue that Laudisi’s splitting of his reflection in the mirror and himself into two separate individuals is an example of personification in the sense that he attribution a separate sentient identity to what is merely a reflected image.

The play uses the now-rarely engaged device of a character referred to as a raisonneur. This is a person endowed with the moral or intellectual authority to act as a guide for the audiences through the relative absurdity of the rest of the play’s population. The result bears a minimal similarity to the role of the Chorus in the plays of ancient Greece.